Murrysville’ s Steel City Parkour teaches the art of movement. a
young boy perches precariously atop a tower of large foam blocks. Seconds later, he launches himself backward and flips through the air, landing softly into a pit of foam cubes. As he climbs out of the pit, a group of young men cheer on the little boy, encouraging him to try it again.
This is not your average kids gymnastics class! This is Steel City Parkour, the area’ s only gym dedicated to the art of parkour, acrobatics and obstacle course training.
Parkour, which means“ the path” in French, is the art of moving quickly from Point A to Point B using acrobatics, jumps and climbing. The movement is massive in Europe and on the West Coast, and has seen steady interest in Pittsburgh over the past few years, says Steve DiGirolamo, Steel City Parkour’ s owner.
Business at the gym is flourishing, partly because many of the competitors on the popular TV show“ American Ninja Warrior” are also parkour athletes.
“ Although they require very different skills, parkour and Ninja Warrior tend to go hand-in-hand,” says DiGirolamo.“ We’ re drawing a lot of people because of the interest in that show, especially since they filmed in Pittsburgh last season.”
The gym’ s state-of-the-art equipment includes a trampoline wall, a foam pit, a roof gap simulator and a replica of one of the“ American Ninja Warrior’ s” most challenging obstacles: the“ warped wall,” which extends 14 feet straight up before curving backward.
By Jennifer Brozak
DiGirolamo, 24, has been a parkour athlete for about seven years. While studying business in college, he found a gym that offered a parkour class. Soon, he began coaching. He then spent a week at the first-ever Parkour Week at Camp Woodward in State College, where he worked with multiple professional parkour athletes, further cementing his passion for the sport.
He opened the gym about a year ago after what he calls a series of“ fortunate events.”
In August of 2014, he heard that the former Murrysville gymnastics studio Flip City Gymnastics was going out of business. At first, the previous owner was interested in forming a partnership with DiGirolamo, but when she couldn’ t find a head coach, she decided to quit the business entirely.
“ I always knew that I wanted to open a gym, and just by luck everything fell into place,” he says.“ It was the bargain of a lifetime – I was in the right place at the right time, for sure.”
The parkour scene in Pittsburgh is tiny compared to that of New York City, Washington, D. C., or California, so DiGirolamo was at once anxious and excited about launching his own business. When he first opened in November of 2014, he only had about 30 students and a few of those, he says, were“ leftovers” from the gymnastics studio.
“ There were a few moments at first there that were tense and scary,” he says.“ Business didn’ t start to really pick up until January.”
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